


Yesterday is Gone

by Estie



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Love Letters: A Cormoran Strike Valentine's Day Fest, Opening Up, Past Relationship(s), Slow Burn, Trust, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 02:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22288678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estie/pseuds/Estie
Summary: Robin doesn't want to tell a client his wife is cheating on him on Valentine's Day.
Relationships: Charlotte Campbell Ross/Cormoran Strike, Matthew Cunliffe/Robin Ellacott, Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26
Collections: Love Letters: A Cormoran Strike Valentine's Day Fest





	Yesterday is Gone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lemon_verbena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemon_verbena/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [StrikeLoveLetters](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/StrikeLoveLetters) collection. 



> **Prompt:** Yesterday is Gone
> 
> This might be seen as a bit of an anti-Valentine's Day piece but it is also a piece where Cormoran finally opens up to Robin about one aspect of his relationship with Charlotte that he has kept secret from everyone. It ends with their friendship deeper than ever.
> 
> CW: Reference to domestic violence.
> 
> And, just to be completely clear, 'Nervous Nick' is not Nick Herbert. He is a completely separate and largely irrelevant character used mainly as a plot device.

“Cormoran, can I get your advice?”

Strike looked up from his computer. “Of course, Robin. What’s up?”

Robin sat down on the chair across from him and pushed forward her phone.

“I got the photos of Nervous Nick’s wife today. She’s definitely doing the dirty on him.”

Strike glanced down at the photo of a busty, skimpily dressed blonde passionately kissing a man who was certainly not Nervous Nick. Robin had got a good angle; you could clearly see tongues poking out and his hand on her cleavage.

“Well, you know the drill, Robin. Call up the client, show him the pics and make sure we have plenty of tissues.”

Robin rolled her eyes. “Okay Cormoran, but when exactly should I set up the interview? It’s already nearly lunchtime and I doubt he’ll be able to come in today.”

Strike was irritated. “So, make it for tomorrow or the next day or whenever. It doesn’t really matter.” He couldn’t believe Robin was bothering him with such a petty issue. She was normally self-sufficient – too self-sufficient sometimes – and had plenty of initiative. It was not like her to be fussing over an appointment time.

Robin sighed. “Today’s February 13,” she said.

“So?”

“Tomorrow is February 14. Valentine’s Day. Are you seriously suggesting I set up an appointment to tell a client his wife is cheating on him on Valentine’s Day?”

“Well, better than letting him spend the day deluded that his wife is passionately in love with him,” retorted Strike. “It’s just a day.”

“Oh, you’re impossible!” snapped Robin. “If I tell him tomorrow, Valentine’s Day will be ruined for the rest of his life.

“It’s already ruined,” Strike retorted. “The card makers and chocolate producers have seen to that. And the Catholic Church. They took a Roman festival that was essentially a kinky drunken orgy and sanitised it.”

Robin took a deep breath but refused to be diverted. Strike did this to her all the time. He had so much fascinating knowledge neatly filed in his head and she resolved to ask him more about the origins of Valentine’s Day at another time but right now she had to make a decision about Nervous Nick.

“That may be,” she conceded. “But Nervous Nick probably knows only about the soft and fluffy version of Valentine’s Day.”

Strike sighed. “Call him now, Robin. Tell him you have an update and give him the option of coming in today, tomorrow or later in the week. Let him make the decision.

“Their relationship is fucked anyway,” he added. “It wouldn’t have mattered if all you’d seen and got photos of was his wife meeting with her sister or reading a book on her own. It was over the moment he decided to engage us, the moment he decided he didn’t trust her or couldn’t talk with her about his concerns and came to us instead of going to a relationship counsellor.”

Robin blinked. She’d never thought about their work that way. What a horrible realisation.

As if he could read her mind, Strike added, more kindly now, “What I’m trying to say Robin is that whatever happens now, whatever day you tell him, doesn’t make a difference. None of what happens next is your fault or my fault. He engaged us because at some level he already knew the relationship was over and he wanted something to confirm his gut instincts. These photos will do that. In many ways you are doing him a favour; imagine having so little trust in your partner and then finding out that they were doing nothing wrong, that you had misjudged them, and you were the one in the wrong.”

Robin’s head whirled. Everything Strike had said was true but there was something wrong with his conclusion. She said as much. Strike laughed.

“You’re smarter than most people, Robin. Look up ‘sophistry’ some time.”

“And call the client now” he added. “Get it over with, Give him the photos, the report and, most importantly, the final invoice!”

**********

Robin did as Strike advised. Slightly to her surprise, Nick asked if he could come in that day after work and Robin, keen to avoid a Valentine’s Day meeting, readily agreed. By 6:30pm he had come and gone, taking the photos and looking saddened and deflated but not surprised. He’d also readily handed over his credit card to settle the bill and Robin gleefully waved the confirmation receipt under Strike’s nose.

“I gave him a £50 discount for same day payment. That and the bank fees are nothing compared to the pain and cost of chasing final payment.”

Strike nodded approvingly. “Want to grab a drink now?” he asked her. “My shout. I’m done for the night.”

**********

While Strike was getting the drinks, Robin surreptitiously looked up ‘sophistry’ on her phone.

_The practice of using clever arguments that sound convincing but are in fact false._

“What are you reading?” Strike asked, placing a glass of white wine in front of her.

“Just trying to work out how you managed to argue that we were doing Nervous Nick more of a favour by showing him photos of his wife’s infidelity rather than evidence that she was meeting her sister for lunch.”

“Philosophy is very underrated these days. No-one wants to learn logic and reasoning; it’s all marketing and accounting.”

Robin pulled a face. “Do you miss studying the Classics?” she asked, curious. Strike was such a contradiction. So pragmatic, so focussed on living in the moment, but also so learned and interested in long-dead languages and ancient history.

“Never stopped studying,” Strike replied. “I stopped going to university, but I still read.”

Robin drew a sharp breath. That was it, she thought. The fundamental difference between Matthew and Strike. Matthew was so proud of his university degree, so contemptuous of Strike (and herself, she now realised) for dropping out, and so disinterested in learning for its own sake. The university degree was simply a means to achieving economic and social prosperity. Strike had willingly given up the chance for a far more prestigious degree from Oxford but never stopped learning.

“What’s up?” he asked, curious at her reaction.

Robin hesitated. She didn’t know how to put into words, didn’t know if she wanted to put into words her sudden realisation. It seemed oddly intimate.

“Nothing,” said Robin, casting about for a safer, less personal topic, and failing. “Just realised that this will be my first Valentine’s Day since I was 16 without Matt.”

“Ah,” said Strike. “You okay?”

Robin giggled. “Hadn’t even thought about it until now.”

She was suddenly serious. “Whatever happens tomorrow – even if I’d had to have had that meeting with Nervous Nick tomorrow – it will be a better day than last year.”

Last year, still married to Matthew, had been awful. She’d known in her heart that marrying him had been the biggest mistake of her life but she was still trying to pretend to herself, to Matt to the world, that everything was okay.

“Pretending to care when you don’t, is the worst,” she explained.

Strike nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “Caring when the other person doesn’t. That’s pretty shit too.”

He pointed to a scar on his left cheek. “Got this Valentine’s Day 2003.”

Robin looked down at her hands and said nothing. Strike was usually very reserved. She did not want to impinge on his personal space, his personal pain. But he seemed to want to talk.

“Charlotte threw a kettle. It was still full of boiling water. I’m lucky I didn’t lose an eye.”

“Oh, Cormoran!” Robin didn’t know what to say. She reached out across the table and placed one of her small, smooth white hands on his big, calloused hairy one. “That’s just awful.”

“I was never a fan of Valentine’s Day but that really killed it for me,” he added.

“I’m not surprised,” was all Robin could say.

“Do you know what the worst thing was?”

Robin was silent, judging that he wasn’t really looking for an answer.

“I went back. And I went back. And I went back.”

“You see it all the time in the papers, on the news. Hell, I said it about my own mother. Why did she stay? Why did she go back to that violent bastard? Why didn’t she leave?”

“Look at me Robin!” Strike said. Robin slowly raised her head and met Strikes eyes. They were glassy, the tears almost ready to break.

“I’m 6’3”. I’m an ex-boxer. I trained with the Special Forces in the army. I can and I have defended myself against so many people, so many men. I have disarmed them and knocked them out - you know me. Hell, remember that first year? You had to stop me killing John Bristow. I am not a weak man.”

Robin slowly nodded, enthralled by Strike’s story, stunned by his sudden opening up to her.

“But Charlotte, I just couldn’t. I loved her. I loved her so much. I didn’t want to hurt her. I could have stopped her any time but I didn’t want to accidentally hurt her by defending myself.”

Robin’s eyes were tearing up now in empathy as she absorbed the pain leaking from Strike.

“I never hurt her,” Strike repeated. “But she tried to kill herself that day she threw the kettle at me. Climbed up on that bridge near Hammersmith and was going to jump. The police finally got her down and she was sectioned. Worst Valentine’s Day ever.”

He stopped talking, suddenly aware that tears were running down Robin’s face. He got up and sat down beside her, hugging her awkwardly with one arm before she turned sideways to return his embrace.

"Oh Cormoran," Robin finally managed. "What a shitty, shitty thing to happen." She gulped awkwardly, not sure how to say the rest. "It's over now. Yesterday is gone." 

They sat there in comfortable silence until they both stopped crying. Then Strike’s tummy gave a familiar loud rumble. Robin giggled out loud.

“How about we grab some dinner now,” she said, swallowing the last of her tears with a deep breath. “And talk about something fun. You can fill me in on the kinky orgy origins of Valentine’s Day.”

**Author's Note:**

> The story Strike told Robin, based on NPR's 'The Dark Origin's of Valentine's Day'  
> https://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/133693152/the-dark-origins-of-valentines-day  
> and  
> The Conversation's 'The ‘real’ St. Valentine was no patron of love'  
> http://theconversation.com/the-real-st-valentine-was-no-patron-of-love-90518
> 
> "A lot of historians believe Valentine's Day has its roots in the ancient Romans feast of Lupercalia. It was celebrated from February 13 -15. Young men got drunk and naked, sacrificed a goat and a dog, and then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain. Young women would line up for the men to hit them, believing this would make them fertile.
> 
> "There was also a matchmaking lottery, in which young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then be, um, coupled up for the duration of the festival — or longer, if the match was right.
> 
> "The name of the day may be because Emperor Claudius II executed two men — both named Valentine — on Feb. 14 of different years in the 3rd century A.D. Their martyrdom was honored by the Catholic Church with the celebration of St. Valentine's Day.
> 
> "Later, Pope Gelasius I muddled things in the 5th century by combining St. Valentine's Day with Lupercalia to expel the pagan rituals.
> 
> "Valentine's Day, however, was not associated with romantic love until the 14th century when Geoffrey Chaucer, author of “The Canterbury Tales” wrote a poem associating the February feast of St. Valentinus to the mating of birds.
> 
> "English audiences embraced the idea of February mating. Shakespeare’s love-struck Ophelia spoke of herself as Hamlet’s Valentine.
> 
> In the following centuries, Englishmen and women began using Feb. 14 as an excuse to pen verses to their love objects. Industrialisation made it easier with mass-produced illustrated cards adorned with smarmy poetry, and more recently chocolates and fluffy toys".


End file.
